Matt Heinz has been a reader and supporter of this blog for a long time.  He is also located in one of my favorite parts of the country and I think he and I have very similar marketing philosophies.  So when he asked me to review his book I was happy to.

His book is full of simple online strategies to grow your business.  I interviewed him and here is what he had to say:

1) What makes your book special and interesting?

At HouseValues, we recently launched an exciting new set of Web marketing tools to help our small business real estate agent customers capture more new business directly from the Web.  The book was written as an accompaniment to that product launch, to help our customers accelerate the impact and return they’re getting from these new tools.

But the book wasn’t just written from the point of view of real estate agents.  We wrote the book for all small business, as nearly every step in creating a successful, profitable Web marketing strategy is applicable to accountants, bakers, retailers, consultants and much more.

The book’s format is perhaps its most unique feature.  Instead of offering a large, intimidating block of Web marketing strategies, we’ve broken it down into individual steps.  Each step typically takes just 10-15 minutes to complete, and they’re written in sequential order.  If you were to simply follow the book a day at a time, after 2-3 months you’d have built yourself an incredibly powerful Web marketing strategy, all with minimal time commitment and surprisingly little out-of-pocket expenses.

Or, simply flip through the book and pick out the easy-to-execute strategies you like the most.  They can be working hard for your business by the afternoon!

2)  Was publishing your first book easier or harder than you thought?

Harder.  We had a great printer, and a great team within HouseValues that handled the book design and fulfillment.  But just the act of writing the book (even though it’s only 120 pages) took more focus and discipline than I had imagined.  That said, writing a book is incredibly fulfilling, and I’m even more excited to see it in use.  Many of our customers at HouseValues are already using the book to improve their Web marketing, and drive more customers into their business from across the business.  That’s the best output of this project, by far.

3) How do you use your book as a marketing tool?

At HouseValues, we offered a free copy of the book to every customer who took advantage of and activated our new suite of Web marketing tools.  This included a customized, personal Web site as well as advertising of their real estate listings on their behalf across the Web (driving more traffic and prospective customers directly back to their new Web sites).

The response to this offer was incredible.  Even more exciting is that we’ve been able to use both the book and the content of the book to make Web marketing more accessible to our customers, so that more of them are doing things in their business (mostly for free) to increase the volume of business they’re generating for themselves online.  For us, that’s the best part of this entire project – seeing our customers generate more business and success.

4)  Does it really rain every single day in Seattle?

Well, it is raining right now.  But yesterday it was beautiful.  It’s hit or miss here, but in the summer and early fall this is the most beautiful part of the country, hands down.

5)  How and where can someone buy your book?

The book’s available for purchase by visiting http://www.housevaluesbook.com, or just go to Amazon.com and search for “Move The Mouse & Make Millions!”  But if you’re a HouseValues customer, just call us.  We’ll send you one for free.

You can visit Matt’s blog at http://mattonmarketing.blogspot.com/